Likely AMPAS Best Picture winner, Atonement , is really wonderful from beginning to end. The tragic tale of love is told as a writer would tell it, a comment which has a lot to do with the original novel on which the film is based. But the film adds another layer of expressiveness which miraculously helps the novel's tale - most movies about writers aren't nearly as clever. The story jumps around a bit, but again, the story actually demands it rather than this just being a random creation of the screenplay. And the sound design is practically perfect, myriad details and typewriter clacking adding layers of substance and diagetic detail, about which, unfortunately, little can be said without spoiling the film. (And no, I've not used the word 'diagetic' since University days.) It's the kind of film that should repay a second viewing. It's also the kind of film, in an English Patient sort of way, that the Academy should love.
We also saw another Best Picture, but this is from the Soviet Union circa 1970. About four years ago, I was in Moscow and went on a business lunch to a theme restaurant: white-washed adobe, desert outpost style. Our host told us that it was based on the beloved film White Sun of the Desert. Apparently, this is the Star Wars of Russia, a western (their term is Ostern), with a wry, smart, quick draw hero of the civil war (reds v. white, recall) taking on local (asiatic) desperados in order to save the day, in this case a harem of nine women. And by "beloved" I mean that almost every line is now a Russian catch-phrase, a character's folk song was a hit, and the film was voted favorite movie in 1995.
For me, I can almost get it; the one-liners don't really translate well with sub-titles, and the old-fashioned '60s fight-scenes and shoot-em-ups are not well done. I imagine if I had seen it back in the day, on a late-night movie show, it would make more sense. But the great spaghetti westerns and real U.S. westerns are, for me of course, superior.